Campus The Hague gained a new facility. On Thursday 17 February, POPcorner was opened, helping students find their way during their studies and within the university buildings.

Do young people who want to change gender have the unconditional right to medical treatment? Pediatric Endocrinologist Martine de Vries, who is also Professor of Medical Ethics, treats transgender children and adolescents. She will discuss this in her ‘Pride Talk’ on 18 September.

Purple clothing and a pride flag flying from all University buildings: Leiden University is once again taking part in Purple Friday. How do people experience this day? We asked some employees and students of the Faculty of Humanities.

Leiden biologists have found a mutation in flour beetles that allows them to speed up their development. The study has been published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Does the university value teaching less than research? Can you advance in science without academic awards? Which scholars inspire you? Does the university pay enough attention to both your academic achievements and your personal well-being?

Professor Kees Waaldijk presented the report on the LawsAndFamilies Database to Pearl Dykstra, member of the High Level Group of Scientific Advisors of the European Commission on 25 April. This comparative study shows that in European countries same-sex partners are increasingly gaining equal rights.…

Metals surfaces form a group of effective catalysts for the reaction of small molecules such as hydrogen (H2).

What role do parent-child interactions play in the development, maintenance and treatment of depression in young people?

Mouse models are commonly used to assess the immunogenicity of therapeutic proteins and to investigate the immunological processes leading to antidrug antibodies. The aim of this work was to develop a transgenic (TG) Balb/c mouse model for evaluating the immunogenicity of recombinant human insulin (insulin)…

Can behaviour in an online economic game be understood as a representation of radicalisation propensity?

Do natural soundscapes affect migratory decisions of fishes moving up and down rivers and is this process disturbed by vessel sounds?

This thesis reports on the influence of induction programs on beginning teachers’ well-being and professional development, and the essential characteristics of an induction program. These topics were explored by means of an interview study and large scale survey study.

On the 12th of December, Ria Huijgen-Koolen successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Ria on this achievement!

This problem analysis raises the importance of a two interlinked questions: (1) what are important digital skills in the public sector? and (2) how well do different organizational and individual factors explain differences in skills levels?

When and how was alphabetic writing introduced to Greece and the wider Mediterranean region?

This article presents a five-step framework for building behavioural cybersecurity strategy to reduce human-related risks affecting organisational security

This dissertation reports on the requirements for the design and development of teacher assessments, and examines the possibility of developing an assessment procedure that complies with the formulated requirements.

Historical geo data are gaining in importance. Provided that they are exactly geo referenced, they can be stored into a GIS and thus be combined with all kinds of maps (topographical, pedological, etc.) and datasets. This makes it possible to analyze historical developments in space and time on a detailed…

Drawing is one of the most unique human behaviours. Like language, drawing is a mode of communication and a cognitive tool that from an early age allows us to interact with others. Is the early development of drawing skill influenced by the social environment? If so, how?

This thesis investigates catalytic reactions at the atomic scale using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), with a focus on Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, a key industrial process that converts hydrogen and carbon monoxide into liquid fuels.

There are millions of gene clusters that encode the biosynthesis of bioactive natural products, with the vast majority yet unknown. How can we prioritize them to discover new chemical space for antibiotics? For this we will set up a pipeline based on federated learning (AI), synthetic biology and bioactivity…

The human brain stores not only individual words, but also all kinds of abstract information about these words. Research by Leiden linguists has shown that speakers have ready access to this information.

Around ten per cent of students have some form of functional disability, varying from ADHD or dyslexia to a physical handicap. Under a UN treaty, the Netherlands is obliged to provide better facilities for these students. What does Leiden University do for this group? Watch the video on Studying with…

Not one, but two initiatives won this year's Van Bergen prize. The prize was awarded during the university's Diversity symposium on 22 January. One of the winners is OpenUp, an interactive symposium on coping with stress and fear. Students are invited to tell their stories. The Hague Campus' study advisers…

Staff and students who want some quiet time out will now have a low-sensory room available to them. Lipsius 1.38 has been specially designed to help people relax.

LUC Dean Professor Judi Mesman has been awarded the NWO-Vici grant for her project on racial socialization within a family context.

The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Leiden University is considering establishing a special chair for Workplace Pride. The professor appointed to this chair will study opportunities for improving the position of lesbian women, homosexual men, bisexuals and transgender people (LGBTs) in…

At the Faculty of Law, multiple initiatives and projects are launched annually to maintain a focus on diversity and inclusion.

The Sustainable Development minor now has its own Facebook page. Do you want to stay up to date on all activities pertaining to the minor? If so, sign up as a fan by clicking the

1) The in-use construction material stocks of the BRI projects and their temporal and spatial distribution. 2) Environmental impacts (e.g. carbon emission and biodiversity loss) of constructing BRI projects. 3) Socio-cultural impacts of the BRI projects.

The overall objective of ECS is to widen and strengthen the European Citizen Science community through capacity building and awareness raising activities such as the creation of a European Citizen Science Academy and the establishment of a network of 28 ECS Ambassadors.

Shah recently wrote an op-ed for the Commentaries series of the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, which has been published online. The piece is on India’s performance and priorities regarding the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) and collaboration with the EU.

The Van Bergen Prize was awarded to not one, but two initiatives at the Diversity Symposium on 22 January. ‘Leiden City Safari’ is a fun city tour that will help incoming Dutch and international students get to know the city of Leiden – and each other. The interactive ‘OpenUP!’ symposium will invite…

Racism and discrimination come in many different shapes and forms – in the Netherlands too. Verbal attacks, stereotypes and violence: some people are confronted with these on a daily basis. A group that is often not included in research and the debate on racism is people of Asian descent. The Diversity…

Eveline Crone wrote a new edition of

Heightened activation of the striatum that adolescents show in response to reward is often associated with risk-taking and negative health consequences. This article in Nature Communications investigates a potential positive side of this heightened activation. It shows that the activity peak in late…

Including modelling as part of software development appears to have various benefits.

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What effect did the lockdown have on young people? Leiden researchers started a study of this in the first year of the covid pandemic. They discovered an impact on the development of the brain areas involved in social behaviour. The researchers published their discovery in Scientific Reports at Nat…

The percentage of female professors at Leiden University has risen to 30.2%. These are the results of the Women Professors Monitor 2021, which was published by the Dutch Network of Women Professors (LNVH). This shows that Leiden University is well above the national average of 25.7%.

Een samenwerking tussen het Leids Universitair Medische Centrum (LUMC), de Universiteit Leiden en Philips ontvangt financiering van wetenschapsfinancier NWO om MRI-scans te versnellen. Deze drie partijen vormen samen een van de 17 AI-labs die onder de naam ROBUST voor een periode van 10 jaar NWO-steun…

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for a workshop within the project 'Human Development and Its Outliers' on 26 and 27 March 2026 at Leiden University.

At the end of October, the Steering Committee, headed by Dean Mark Rutgers, gave the green light for the development of the new Faculty Strategic Plan for 2021-2026. How does this process go?

During this last year, most of our efforts and involvement in terms of recruitment activities and events as well as connecting with prospective students, parents and schools has all been moved online. Not a big surprise – this has been the shift for the entire world.

As of April 1, physicist Dorothea Samtleben is the first female program leader of Nikhef, the National Institute for Subatomic Physics. Samtleben will lead the Neutrino Physics group there. ‘This is an important step for Nikhef when it comes to diversity.’

Archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers participated in the development of the boardgame Epoch: Early Inventors. “This game is inspired by the major innovation that happened in prehistoric times. A topic that has my interest and that I teach here in Leiden.

The development plans for the Humanities Campus are changing somewhat. The financial challenges at the Faculty of Humanities and the higher education cuts mean Leiden University has to reduce its spending. One consequence is the Lipsius building will not be rebuilt after demolition in 2031.

An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine…

Dr Jenny Doetjes was appointed Professor of Semantics and Language Variation in February. During her professorship Dr. Doetjes wishes to focus on charting linguistic patterns between languages that, at first glance, seem to have little to do with each other.